In the field of an electrophotographic image forming apparatus, it has been a common practice to use such toner that contains a releasing agent (wax), to form a toner image on a sheet of recording medium, and to use a fixing device to fix the formed toner image to the sheet by applying heat and pressure to the sheet and to the toner image thereon.
It is known that, during the fixation of a toner image, the wax in toner vaporizes, and then, immediately condenses. It has been known by the inventors of the present invention that, after the wax vaporizes and condenses, a large amount of microscopic particles of wax (that are several nanometers (nm) to several hundreds of nm in diameter, and hereafter may be referred to as dust) remain floating in the adjacencies of the fixing member of the fixing device. Unless these microscopic particles of wax, which result from the condensation of vaporized wax from the toner, are dealt with immediately after the condensation, it is possible that most of the particles will disperse out of the fixing device, which will have undesirable effects upon the images that are being formed by the image forming apparatus. Thus, in order to prevent the microscopic wax particles from dispersing out of the fixing device, it has been desired to turn the microscopic wax particles into particles of a larger size as soon as they are formed through the condensation of the vaporized wax.
In the case of the fixing device disclosed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Application No. 2010-217580, which employs an electromagnetic induction heating system, a heating member is disposed in the adjacencies of the coil holder of the device, in order to prevent the wax from cumulatively solidifying on the coil holder. More concretely, the fixing device is configured so that, as the cumulatively solidified wax on the coil holder is heated by the heating member, the wax liquefies and drips down.
In the case of the fixing device disclosed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Application No. 2011-112708, the cleaning web for removing the microscopic particles, which are remaining adhering to the fixation roller, is made of such material that contains an agent that is capable of capturing the microscopic particles.
In the case of the fixing devices disclosed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Application No. 2010-217580 and No. 2011-112708, however, it is impossible to prevent the large amount of dust, which is present in the adjacencies of the fixing member, from dispersing out of the fixing device. In other words, these patents cannot be solutions to the above-described problem.